Must we tag sex heresy for discourse?

With Auntie Agatha,gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com,Tel: 08054500626


Dear Agatha,

I pray you are able to handle my problem like you did to others. I have the challenge of inability to open up to people easily. I discovered this in adolescent years.

I noticed that people react by branding me a moral misfit anytime I voice my opinion on any issue.

This attitude of my friends who were as a matter of fact my Christian brothers forced me to enter into a deeper relationship with God. At a point, I felt like the only one needing repentance among so many people who were born-again.

Having made up my mind to remain with God, I felt no need to have anything to do with those brethren or anyone else.

Unfortunately, another problem has emerged from this. It has to do with my sexuality. I am so nervous in front of girls. I don’t even know how to relate with them. I am easily emotional with each one that comes.

This is made complex by my habit of impulsive reaching out to anyone I am having a conversation with. This is irrespective of the gender of the person I am having the conversation with. I have been so affected by this condition to the point I find it difficult being myself when conversing with another person for fear of condemnation.

Agatha, I am a free minded person not afraid to embrace any subject including sex for discussion. But this is the very essence of me that gets condemned by others.

I have met girls who are bold to discuss the sensitive matter of sex, which I cannot discuss so openly. They do it without guilt.

The subject of my sexuality and sex generally intrigues me. I thirst for information about it as well as passing the information through discussion to other.

My motives are clean without guilt, but people make me feel guilty for something I don’t want to feel guilty about.

How can I handle this knotty, but important discourse, which unfortunately the church itself is shy to handle?

Why are parents uncomfortable talking about it with their children? Agatha, why are my fellowship brethren condemning me? Why did God create it if it is so abominable?

Please, don’t get me wrong. I don’t encourage fornication and adultery, but I think this silence is the greatest threat to sexual sanity. Children can’t even talk about it with their parents. All we have are ill experienced friends to discuss the subject with.

Now to my question, is there anything shameful about sex as a subject of discussion? When I ventured to talk to my mother about my feelings for my best friend who is a girl, she was outraged. She told me the girl must have bewitched me and that she is also trying to deceive me.

Agatha, my mother talked as if she never experienced adolescence. Many of our parents forget that they were once like us and went through the challenge of all the confusing sexual experiences we are going through now.

They forget they also had pressures that can destroy if not properly handled .Our sexuality is destroying us today and your advice would not help only me but many other youths as well.

Jacob.





Dear Jacob,

I understand and feel your sentiments more than you can imagine. Growing up with parents, especially a mother who though educated, a teacher; forbade us from broaching the subject of sex, kept us in the dark about something as basic as menstrual flow. I know where you are coming from.

Then I didn’t understand all the fuss about it or why someone that educated refused to be drawn into discussing the changes going on in her children’s bodies particularly the girls.

Like you, I also couldn’t comprehend the attitude of the church or all the holiness going on around me, but one incident happened that helped me to focus my life properly. It helped realised that irrespective of what people were saying about themselves or values, what remains most important is what you thought of yourself.

This happened when one of the tormentors of our liberal attitudes got pregnant. She was the leader of the Scripture Union (SU) then. She made the rest of us felt like devils incarnate. I, being one of the most mischievous, was always getting into her wrong side and being two years my senior, was in the position to deal with me but for my privileged position as one of the most loved and brilliant students of the school.

She got pregnant in her final year and had to sit for her school certificate examination as an external student.

From that point, I refused to abide with the opinions others have of me preferring to listen to my own conscience in everything I did.

It was a freedom so sweet because it enabled me to grow up with the knowledge that nobody but me can gate-keep my morals.

With this came the confidence to speak out on my sexuality. I didn’t care what name people called me, but I made sure I got my mother as well as all the adults to listen to me. My father remains the most liberal, because when I became a thorn on his flesh, he would order my mother to play her role.

Over the years, I have come to understand the unease adults feel about sex. The delicate nature of sex makes it so. Because children have different attitudes and perspective to issues, adopting a broad based approach may not be a very wise thing for children who are only looking for a reason to do what they had always wanted to do.

But this is not to say that basic information should not be given to each child. It is part of the rights of a child to be told early in life about sex, its reason and attendant pains when done out of time. The facts should be made bare to a child to enable him or her appreciate the enormous responsibility attached to the act of sex.

If information were given from the right source a lot of mistakes would be avoided, because every child comes with a dream of being great and of taking charge of things around. Irrespective of whether the dream has a universal or local flavour or not, one thing is paramount to the nascent mind of a child, that of being able to succeed in life.

And if at that early age, parents, schools as well as the churches form alliance to help the child stay focused by pointing out the dangers of premarital sex, not the ‘don’t do’ syllabus, but through discussions with the aid of real life stories of dreams that died prematurely due to early sex, girls especially would learn to gate-keep properly.

That a child is curious about sex doesn’t make the child morally bankrupt; rather it shows a deep understanding of changes going on inside the body as well as an awareness of something very fundamental in the society all around.

Sex is the biggest and fastest selling brands in the world. So trying to shield the child from it is a vast waste of time hence the need for both churches and parents to adopt new strategies towards it.

The refusal of parents or spiritual leaders to talk about it won’t make the longing and desire to have sex among youths go away. Rather, this conspiracy of silence only makes children more determined to damn the consequences. For this reason, parents especially in Africa must begin to rethink their attitude and allow their children the privilege of knowing what life has in store for them because whether they like it or not, the child would someday know about it.

The thinking that discussing sex enhances promiscuity is neither here nor there. A child that would be promiscuous doesn’t need information from the parents to do it. Sex is a very cheap commodity and information concerning it commonplace. The only worry is the quality of the market place information the child gets. Besides, who is the one giving the child the information? What experience has such a person to earn the exalted position of a teacher or counsellor?

I agree that keeping quiet is dangerous and exposes the child to more harm than good. If you are not getting the required help from your parents, force them by pointing the obvious to them, getting the information from the streets.

Now matter how difficult a parent is, the idea of his or her child getting information on sexuality from the streets frightens enough to make the parent have a change of mind.

Parents get away with it because youths refuse to exercise their rights as well as bow to emotional blackmails of parents who in their bid to hide their discomfort about sex, hide behind the façade of morality not to talk.

However manner of approach is important. From my own experiences as a child and mother, youths would gain more by beginning the discourse with a gentle approach. Arrest your parents’ concern by telling them of the changes you are feeling.

Youths should adopt the approach of perplexity when broaching the topic with their parents. They should appeal for understanding of the things they notice in their bodies, but which they don’t understand its essence.

Help to make sense of why their bodies are beginning to react in a particular way to one person, why their voices are changing, why they are experiencing mood swings, why the girls are bleeding from their private parts, filling out in their breasts and hips areas.

When it comes to information, youths should not stereotype.

If mothers are not willing to talk, approach the fathers. There is nothing about each other’s body dad or mum doesn’t know.

In worship places, they should ask probing questions that signify their desperation for information. Anytime adults read out the dos and don’ts of the adult world, youths should be bold enough to ask why these rules must be obeyed. It is the only way they can get everybody to pay attention to them.

They should make adults around them realise asking questions about their sexuality doesn’t translate to a desire to do it, but a right to be informed which comes with awareness of habits and things to avoid.

Above all, youths should begin early to trust God by learning all about His ways. It is the only way they can earn the respect of all adults.

Good luck.